Free Myths of Origin by Catherynne M. Valente Page A

shapeless land. Too weak to stay my own course and continue in the velvet pleasures of Wandering alone and unfettered. I am losing myself, the self that is no other. If I knew my name, I could grip it like the edge of a cliff, drive my teeth into it and never let go. I could keep hold, and not slip. But it is hidden in the Book of the Hammer, and the inquisitors will not let me see. They are preparing a vat of acid, red as withered roses boiled for tea, sour as lime leaves. I can smell it, the mescaline-arsenic, the stabbing scent of metallic greasepaint and twelve-year scotch, and the pitch they will spread over my irisless eyes so that I will not see how they mutilate my breasts with mewling hands. It will have me, in the end, the Stone wide and bright in my mind’s eye like a rotting moon, I will burn in the tincture that even now simmers in whale-skull vats.
    Into my reverie bursts the Monkey, turning temple-creature with geometric arms full of sandwiches. Dainty white squares from what ingenious tree. But he grinds to a halt and widens his almond eyes to perfect zeros of surprise.
    From scalp to sole my body had flushed to deep red; red palms, red ankles, red nipples, red hair to my waist.
    And eyes, smooth and featureless, pools of blood-shade, red as roses.

16
    “Hoo! Aren’t you a pretty little rose, now! Can’t leave you alone for a minute!” He bustled about, preparing a ridiculously proper tea service on the mottled quartz Road, now reflecting in infinite dusky facets my crimson flesh, torso like a ruby breastplate, carnelian legs crossed gingerly, fire-toned, as though one knee might inflame the other. Fire-goddess, Kali-boned, body of Martian silicate crushed to liquid glass. I touched my face, warmed under the new skin, scald of red, the still-blank eyes wide, wild and creased with fear. The Path seems to blush as it holds my image to its chest.
    “It is getting worse, isn’t it?” Tears like blood welled up.
    “Come now, Darlingred, it’s very striking. Drink your tea. You must not succumb yet, there will be more of this before there is less. I have brought you cucumber sandwiches out of the Wild, why do you not smile?” His own brown face was covered in crumbs. I drank with sullen lips, the bloodstone color of the Sea-Walls.
    With a sandwich in one hand, held up like a pale green mudra, full of salt and taste of a watery delta, I turned my face towards the sliding honey of a late afternoon sky, light illuminating the scarlet contours of my firebody, woman-shaped flame sitting zazen on the tatami of the wide Road, knee deep in the latticework of tea ceremony, a primal streak of red against the sky gold as a temple-creature’s hide. I am the Monster and the Prey.
    “I am dying, dying in a clutch of painted swords.”
    The Monkey shook his head at the earth. A flash of color caught my eye; in the warm black soil a little Grasshopper twitched her pale green legs.
    “She talks too much, friend Monkey,” the pretty insect whistled, her voice fiddle-high. The Monkey laughed and let the little creature crawl up onto the shelf of his tail. “Yes, but we must forgive her. She is only a small Beast.”
    “How long will you walk the Road with her? How long will you let her think that fur is yours? I have come far, on smaller feet, and I am not so worn as she. Who has been dancing in her, that the slippers of she are so tattered? She is not very pretty, even with all her paint.” The Monkey did not answer, but stroked the top of my ruddy thigh with something like fondness.
    “It’s none of my nevermind, of course,” the Grasshopper chirped, “have to take company as you can get it around here. Two’s better than one with Doors about, eh? But she isn’t well, not at all well. You don’t want to catch it.”
    She waved her antennae at me thoughtfully.
    “I won’t, little one, I won’t. There is some sandwich left, if you would like it.”
    “Oh, thank you, I haven’t had the strength to climb